Winter is Coming – Game of Thrones Series Recap Part 5

Winter is here and so is the season 7 premiere! Well, almost. So following our lengthy recap of the past couple of seasons, we’re finally up to Season 5, and what a season it was.

Let us again begin with the Lannisters, Westeros’ most fucked up family. With the death of Tywin and the late King Joffrey, the Lannister numbers are dwindling. Tyrion has escaped and Cersei, Jaime and Tommin are left to fend for themselves in King’s Landing.

After receiving a bit of hate-mail from Dorn, Jaime embarks on a secret mission to bring back their daughter Myrcella. You remember her, the only daughter of Cersei and Jaime that Tyrion sent off to Dorn to be married off, in a successful attempt to piss off his sister.

And who better to tag along with our one-handed knight than the best sell-sword in the land, Bronn! But more on their road trip in a moment.

Still in King’s Landing, Cersei has threats of her own to deal with. Most importantly, the sly Margaery Tyrell, well Lannister now. With a successful wedding and wedding night, her and Tommin are officially husband and wife, and she wastes no time trying to get her beloved mother-in-law out of King’s Landing. By planting a seed in Tommin’s head, he tries to send his mother back to Casterly Rock, but Cersei won’t go down without a fight.

By enlisting the help of “the Faith”, she gets rid of her Tyrell opposition in one fell swoop. First Lawrence Tyrell is imprisoned for being gay and Margaery directly after for covering it up. However, karma’s a bitch. Remember Cersei’s boy toy cousin Lancel from season 2? Well he is back, reborn, and ready to throw Cersei under the bus for laying with him! Those who live in glass houses, shouldn’t throw stones after all.

After tattling on Cersei for touching him, she is imprisoned as well. As King Tommin does nothing, Cersei must help herself get out of this situation. How you may ask? Well it involves fruits and vegetables, a new hair cut, and a very long walk of shame…

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

But we all know Cersei, she isn’t going to stand idly by and let this slide. Meet the new and improved Mountain!

He’s the big guy in gold, in case there’s any confusion.

In the North, the sleaziest of them all, Lord Baelish has wed Sansa off to the only person worse than Joffrey, Ramsay Bolton. Luckily Brienne of Tarth and her good buddy Poddrick are kind of close by, not really, holding out in an inn (for the entire season) waiting for Sansa to light a candle in the window. This candle represents their moment to swoop in and help her escape. Sadly, while they wait for this to happen, Sansa’s life only gets worse with Ramsay and the things he does to her… well I’ll just trust that if you’re reading this what happened has been seared into your brain.

Back at the Wall and Castle Black, Mance Rayder is captured and set ablaze by Melisandre, because “the lord of light commanded it”. Surprisingly enough, Jon Snow is voted in as Lord Commander and has a number of decisions to make right out of the gate. You know like beheading the traitors that opposed his rise to power, refusing to abandon his post and march south with Stannis, sending his best-est bro, Sam, off to become a Maester, and telling Melisandre that NO means NO damn it!

Jeez… Women!

Unlike the rest of Westeros, Jon is actually concerned with the threat that lurks beyond the Wall, the White Walkers. In a bold and some what desperate attempt, Jon looks to make piece with the Wildlings beyond the wall.

If they can join forces in order to take on the impending threat, they may have a chance for survival. Instead we are treated to one of the greatest, most epic battles in television history!! Jon and Tormund Giantsbane make it to HardHome, the last giant settlement of Wildlings, just in time for the White Walkers to attack.

Here we learn a few things:

One, Jon’s Valyrian Steel sword can kill White Walkers..

Two, the Night King is a cocky asshole…

And three, you kind of have the right to be a cocky asshole if you can raise the dead… Shit.

Luckily, Jon Snow is an ace fighter and he, along with Tormund and some other wildlings, just barely make it back to Castle Black alive.

Sadly the same can not be said for our good buddy Stannis Baratheon. With him being caught between a rock and a hard place he burns his only daughter at the stake for ‘good luck’. In response to that his wife hangs herself, the majority of his army abandons him, the Red Witch Melisandre leaves his side, and his attack on Winterfell is an epic failure. Better luck next time man!

Or not?

Finally out of her tiny room, Brienne of Tarth shows up to deal the killing blow. I feel it is important to note here, while its IMPLIED she kills him, we don’t actually see the killing blow, leading some to assume that Stannis may actually still be alive, just saying, in a show where gore is a staple effect, why wouldn’t you show a main characters death?? Hmmmm.

During the attack on Winterfell, Theon takes this opportunity to try to help Sansa escape as they take a desperate leap off the castle walls. As if things couldn’t get sad enough, Jon Snow is betrayed by his fellow Night’s Watch-men for helping the Wildlings.

They go full on “death to Caesar” on his ass! However, Melisandre is at Castle Black, so is he dead? Will she bring him back?? We shall see.

Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea, Sir Jaime and Bronn are hard at work, fighting through the Sand Snakes in an attempt to get his Mrycella back. It almost works too, but sadly on their way out, Mrycella is given a good-bye kiss that tragically causes her death.

People really love poison in this show… And with that Jaime and Cersei are left with sad, useless Tommin. I’m just going out on a limb here and saying that maybe boning your sister isn’t the best idea? Call it unlucky, call it karma, I’m just saying.

Farther east, Tyrion ends up in the presence of Danny! While he struggles through drinking copious amounts of wine, puking it up and repeating; Varys hopes he will be good council for Danny. He is brought to her by the exiled Jorah Mormont, who has suffered a bit of bad luck and now has the deadly stone skin affliction. He is again exiled after delivering the dwarf to her. Meereen ends up in full-blown revolution after Danny’s undecided stand on slavery. Danny and company are trapped in the middle of an arena when out of nowhere, her rogue, favorite dragon, Drogon, swoops in and flies her far out of harms reach.

However, Drogon drops Danny off and she is immediately captured by her once former people, the Dothraki, silly dragon.

In Braavos, Arya enters the House of Black and White and is taken under the wing and guidance of non-other than our favourite faceless assassin, Jaquen H’ghar! Things are going well until she decides to go rogue and take a name off her list by murdering the once king’s guard, Meryn Trant, you know, the guy that murdered her “dance instructor”?

As punishment for her insubordination, Ayra’s eyes go white and she loses her sight.

With winter pretty much here, we don’t have much longer to go. Keep an eye out for Part 6 where we wrap everything up and prepare for Season 7!